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Housing is one of the challenges of our time. The task for architects and designers is to create affordable, robust housing that can accommodate the needs of a rapidly growing, but also ageing population. And it’s not as easy as simply building. The demands and expectations on house builders to also be community builders and the architects of mental and physical wellbeing through design have led architects and designers to consider alternative ways to house us in the future. This includes innovative use of materials and construction methods, addressing the issue of financing through co-operative living models and using bespoke design to create lifetime homes which can be adapted to accommodate the changing needs of our population.

Large-scale development

One of the big challenges for urban areas is large-scale development strategies for designing and delivering housing to meet need. For developers and planners going forward there are a number of factors to consider: the type of investment introduced to an area; how the schemes fit with a wider development plan for the city; and the importance of engaging the community in any plans to develop or regenerate an area.

“Placemaking”, not just house building is central to large scale development discussions, emphasising to planners, architects and developers the fact that they are not just building houses, but creating communities. As a result, designers and developers should be mindful of their important role in community building, to build the right sort of homes in the right places, at affordable prices and with a legacy in mind. They should, create high quality, long lasting units, which will stand the test of time but that also can be easily adapted to accommodate people’s changing needs.

Alternative construction and design

Innovative models and options for future builds have been discussed for a number of years but they are becoming an increasingly mainstream way to build affordable housing that meets the current need, particularly of students and young professionals, and of older populations looking to downsize or move into assisted care accommodation.

Offsite manufacture or modular homes –Offsite manufacture of timber framed houses is becoming increasingly common, with the constituent pieces of the house manufactured off site, then transported to the site and constructed on a concrete block where foundations and services such as plumbing have already been created. Offsite housing can either be open panel, which requires the finishing such as bathroom and kitchen installation to be done on site, or closed panel which provide the entire section complete with decoration and flooring (this is becoming a common way to build cheap, efficient student housing).

Custom build – Custom build projects are similar to self-build in that they give clients flexibility to select their own design and layout, However, custom build provides slightly more structure and certainty which can make it easier when considering elements like financing and planning applications. In essence, customers select the spec of their house in the same way they might make custom modifications to a car.

Build to rent – This model has been adapted from the United States, where build to rent is popular. The model is based on self-contained flats, with central and shared amenities, entrance and communal space. Designed to attract graduates and young professionals, these are being increasingly designed using a “user first” approach. Developers identify the sort of person they want to live in the development, identify what sort of things they might look for in a development, including floor type, furniture, layout, amenities, gadgets, and then build the development around that.

Dementia friendly – Building homes that are safe and affordable, but allow for independence in old age, is one of the major demands on house builders currently. Housing stock is seen as not suitable for current need, but building bespoke sites for people with illnesses like dementia has been seen as a bit of a niche previously. Virtual Reality (VR) is being used by some architects and developers to try to help them understand the needs and requirements of people with dementia and how they can build homes suitable for them to be able to live as independent and full lives as possible. Building dementia friendly homes not only means making them accessible and open plan, but also adapting the layout, adding signage where appropriate and if possible locating the homes within a wider community development. Dementia villages like those seen in Amsterdam are being used as the model for this.

Co-housing

Co- housing offers an alternative to communities in Scotland, and while lessons can be learned from elsewhere in Europe, where co- housing models have been successful, there are also pockets of good and emerging practice in the UK too. More traditional examples include Berlin, where almost 1 in 10 new homes follow the Baugruppe model, and Amsterdam (centraal wonen) where some of the oldest co-housing projects originate. In Denmark, 8% of households use co-housing models.

Co-housing provides the opportunity for groups of people to come together and form a community which is created and run by its residents. Each household has a self-contained, private home as well as shared community space. Residents come together to manage their community, share activities, and regularly eat together. A “Self-build Cooperative Group” is a joint venture between several private households who plan and build their own house together. Usually they are supported by an architect. Often co- housing groups are able to realise high-quality living space at prices below local market rates, although it is not really considered suitable for large-scale development within the current UK market.

Opportunities for a new way forward

Practitioners are often challenged to push the boundaries of design and building in their field. Looking to new models for future building design provides an opportunity to think creatively about alternative uses of materials and space and to consider options for construction, funding and investment in the built environment that challenge the norm. Learning lessons and exchanging ideas from elsewhere, architects and planners have the opportunity to come together to consider how the built environment in Scotland can help to create places – not just buildings – and how this can contribute positively to the wider wellbeing and happiness of people living in Scotland in the future.

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As a model to promote economic development, Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) have been a success in Scotland. Under the watchful eye and guidance of the umbrella body BIDS Scotland, the framework has grown and in many ways looks very different from the 5 initial ‘pathfinder BIDs in 2006 (the first being Bathgate BID). However, the underlying principles, values and aims remain constant.

Single sector BIDs

The traditional model sees businesses within a local area enter into a financial partnership, with each member paying a levy towards improving and promoting economic development within a community, in partnership with local authorities and other bodies. By working together businesses can reduce costs, share risks and create new platforms for growth, while for local authorities the benefits include the potential to drive growth and investment in the local area and to obtain help in raising additional funds to do this.

However, the flexibility of the model and the way it fits it with both local and national agendas has been a big part of its success, and groups are now trying to apply the framework to new contexts in alternative and innovative ways. One of these new style frameworks is the idea of single sector BIDs. Their role was part of the discussion at the BIDS Scotland 10 year anniversary conference held in Perth last month.

Image via Rebecca Jackson

Single sector BIDs, as supporters have pointed out, come with their own unique sets of challenges and benefits compared to the traditional BID model, but they are no less effective. They allow groups of businesses with common interests and common agendas to come together, cooperate, organise and collectively promote their goods and services with a view to develop not only their own businesses but those of others in their area and the local community as a whole.

Instead the single sector BID model encompasses businesses which sit within the food and drink industry, with a view to promoting East Lothian food and drink, support local business and create a unified voice and brand to market themselves and East Lothian as a quality provider of exquisite produce. They have had strong support from their local authority as well as from national bodies like Scotland Food and Drink. Together, local producers and sellers have been working with these statutory bodies to form their BID partnership. In May 2015 the partnership was awarded a seedcorn grant to develop their Food and Drink BID in East Lothian.

Because the businesses within the proposed BID are varied in terms of size and scope, it was decided to create levy bands relating to the number of employees, rather than rateable value, as had previously been the traditional model. The BID group also introduced a voluntary levy scheme for businesses such as farmers, who wanted to be included in the BID group as producers but were not eligible to under the current BID legislation.

The issue with legislation regarding urban and rural BIDs and the increased difficulty rural businesses have in joining BIDS, (both because of their geographic isolation and their size and categorisation within current legislation) is something which the BID group in East Lothian have stated they are trying to address and mitigate as best they can.

Many observers are watching keenly to see if the single sector BID model could be applied across a wider geographical area, or across additional sectors. Suggestions have already been put forward for a canals BID within Scotland, a universities BID, as well as potentially creating food and drink BIDS in other areas such as Ayrshire and Perthshire. These could potentially form a network of BIDS across the food and drink sector, enabling individual businesses to create a stronger lobbying voice.

The future of BIDs in Scotland?

It is now the case that BIDs in Scotland are not restricted to town and city centres and can be developed in areas such as the tourism and visitor sector, commercial or industrial districts areas, rural areas, agriculture or, as this blog has highlighted, single sector business groups. The flexibility of the model and the increased levels of partnership working act as ways to spread accountability, create legitimacy through collective action and generate additional funding for a local area.

Together these elements make BIDs an interesting proposition for many businesses in Scotland and it is this flexibility, legitimacy and promotion of partnership which has driven the BID model into new and innovative areas, transforming the nature of the relationship between local businesses and statutory bodies within communities and transforming the nature of economic development and community resilience agendas.

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Sometimes it feels like every city in the world is now claiming to be ‘smart’. Our research team regularly add new reports on the topic to our database. And with a policy agenda riding on the back of a multi-billion pound global industry, the positivist rhetoric around smart cities can seem overwhelming.

We’ve blogged before about the disconnect between what surveys suggest the public values in terms of quality of life in urban areas, and what smart cities are investing in. And last week I attended a conference in Glasgow ‘Designing smart cities: opportunities and regulatory challenges’ which refreshingly brought together a multi-disciplinary audience to look at smart cities in a more critical light.

The conference was rich and wide-ranging – too broad for me to try and summarise the discussions. Instead here are some reflections on the challenges which need to be explored.

Every smart city is a surveillance city

Look in any smart city prospectus or funding announcement and you’ll find mention of how data will be ‘managed’, ‘captured’, ‘monitored’, ‘shared’, ‘analysed’, ‘aggregated’, ‘interrogated’ etc. And this is inevitably presented as a benign activity happening for the common good, improving efficiency, saving money and making life better.

As David Murakami Wood pointed out at the conference however, this means that every smart city is by necessity a surveillance city – even if policymakers and stakeholders are reluctant to admit this.

Public debate is failing to keep up with the pace of change

Even for someone who takes a keen interest in urbanism and the built environment, any description of smart cities can risk leaving you feeling like a techno-illiterate dinosaur. It’s clear that there is also a huge amount of hype around the construction (or retrofitting) of smart cities – with vested interests keen to promote a positive message.

Do we really understand the possibilities being opened up when we embed technology in our urban infrastructure? And more importantly, what are the ethical questions raised around sharing and exploiting data? The pace of the development and rollout of new technologies within our urban environments seems to be running ahead of the desirable cycle of reflection and critique.

An interesting point was also made about language – and whether experts, technologists and policymakers need to adjust their use of language and jargon, in order for discussion about smart cities to be inclusive. Ubicomp … augmented reality … the Internet of Things … even the Cloud – how can the public give informed consent to participating in the smart city if the language used obscures and obfuscates what is happening with their data?

Where can we have a voice in the data city?

Following on from this point, cities are not ends in themselves – to be successful they must serve the interests and needs of the people who live, work and visit them. An interesting strand of the conference discussion considered what a bottom-up approach to smart cities would look like.

Alison Powell highlighted that there’s been a shift from seeing people as citizens to treating them as ‘citizen consumers’ – I’d add that within the built environment, this goes hand-in-hand with the commercialisation and privatisation of public space – and this has profound implications around questions of inclusion/exclusion. And also where power and decision-making sits – and who is profiting.

Although some general examples of community participation projects were mentioned during the conference, these didn’t seem to address the question of how ‘people’ can engage with smart cities. Not as problems to be managed or controlled – or as passive suppliers of data to sensors – but as creative and active participants.

Conclusion

I left the conference wondering where society is heading and how we, the Knowledge Exchange, can support our members in local government and the third sector to understand the extensive opportunities and implications of smart cities. We see a key part of our mission to be horizon scanning – and our briefings for members focus on drawing together analysis, emerging evidence and case studies.

Not all towns or cities have the resources, investment or desire to lead the way in technological innovation. But the challenge of bridging the gap between professionals and their vision and understanding of smart cities, and people in communities, is a universal one.

As William Gibson observed: “The future is already here … it’s just not very evenly distributed”.

The Idox Information Service can give you access to a wealth of further information on smart cities or public participation. To find out more on how to become a member, contact us.

Our reading list prepared for last autumn’s Annual UK-Ireland Planning Research Conference looks at some recent literature on smart cities.

The Idox Group is the leading applications provider to UK local government for core functions relating to land, people and property, such as its market leading planning systems. Over 90% of UK local authorities are now customers. Idox provides public sector organisations with tools to manage information and knowledge, documents, content, business processes and workflow as well as connecting directly with the citizen via the web.

“The environment in which we live, work and spend leisure time – both the physical nature of places and the social environment of communities – has an enormous impact on our health and wellbeing. Health problems such as obesity, chronic heart disease, stress and mental health issues are intricately linked to the environments in which people live and work”. (RTPI, 2014)

Earlier this month the RTPI published Promoting healthy cities: Why planning is critical to a healthy urban future, the third in a series of Planning Horizons papers launched to mark the RTPI’s centenary. The report looks at how planning can help to create healthy cities – one of its main arguments being that health and wellbeing need to be at the core of city design and development.

With a growing number of people living in urban areas, and health problems such obesity and diabetes on the rise, planning for healthy cities is vital. And interest in the links between planning and urban health is nothing new.

Last week I attended a workshop organised by Red Ninja Studios, bringing together a wide range of place based organisations, to explore what a technologically integrated future for Liverpool would look like. We spent the day exploring the three main domains of economy, health and transport, what the issues were in the city, what data was available and what innovative ideas we had to solve the issues through technology.

The discussion was interesting and lively but throughout the sessions I kept coming back to ‘why?’. Technology seemed to be the answer but what was the question, what were we trying to achieve?

Smart Cities is the latest policy buzzword – our briefing earlier in the week highlighted the wealth of research and development which is going on in this area and how great leaps in technology are changing the way we live and work in cities. The danger with looking at developing Smart Cities is that the opportunities and options are boundless, and this came through in the workshop. Smart travel systems, integrated health care, environmental measurement, technology development, graduate retention, high quality jobs, access to learning – all could be tackled through integrated next generation technology. So how do we prioritise and get the highest impact we can in a city such as Liverpool?

One of the participants asked “what connects all these ideas, what integrates them?” the simple answer is people, not technology.

So on returning to my desk (or rather my kitchen as I am one of the nation’s 4.2m home workers) I started to think about what ‘people’ would want from a technology driven environment, rather than what the technology will deliver to the people.

A guide on service design in smart cities highlights that we have to start with the ‘business proposition’; people have to be willing to ‘buy’ the service on offer. It highlights two reasons for improvement:

Improving customer service

Increasing the take up of services among key groups to achieve targets

Making it easier to access services

Giving a better service

Giving a service targeted to individual needs

Giving access to a broader range of services

Improving efficiency

Increasing take up among key groups to increase income

Increasing early take up and reducing more expensive interventions later

Improving processes to streamline services and reduce costs

Switching customers to more cost efficient channels

These business imperatives should be at the heart of any technology implementation and technology can impact across all these goals but, form should follow function.

When people were asked by Steer Davies Gleave what words describe a ‘Smart’ city their response was surprising. Although there were a wide range of answers (reflecting the diversity of the term), ‘clean’ and ‘technology’ came out top, followed by ‘transport’, ‘friendly’, ‘connect’, ‘internet’ and ‘eco’. Overall people said smart cities should aim to be ‘a pleasant place to live, work and socialise’ with a ‘healthy, vibrant economy’, and sustainability was at the bottom of the list. When answers were normalised for population, Oxford, York, Bath and Cambridge were seen as the most ‘smart’ cities – all areas with higher ‘smart’ populations as well as ‘nice’ places to live. The priorities for making cities smarter were seen as availability of facilities and services (shops, places to eat and drink, sports and entertainment), modern public transport and safe, secure travel. People want good quality of life experiences.

Future Everything presented a series of essays aimed at shifting the debate on future cities towards the central place of citizens and open urban infrastructures. The essays focus on how cities can create the policies, structures and tools to engender a more innovative and participatory society. Dan Hill discusses the idea that “smart citizens make smart cities” and a city cannot be ‘managed’– it’s a living organic response to people’s lives, where people are often invisible in the management of transport or infrastructure systems. As Hill says, smart cities do not exist, but smart citizens do. The city is its people and technology should enable people to come together.

Can we harness the power of the citizen as an ‘organic sensor’ to improve services, drawing them in to actively engage with improving society? Can a ‘smart city’ be one where active, participatory, citizenship becomes central to the development of infrastructure? If a cities’ smart citizens applied their Instagram, TripAdvisor and Twitter engagement to the transport network or the health centre they use would it drive more responsive services? The answer is yes, but only if those services are listening or care. How can technology help citizens reclaim their space; would we all share information if it improves our quality of life?

The challenge for technology is to respond to the smart citizen, the millennials and generation Alpha will have very different demands, ones we cannot conceive of now. The challenge for government and large technology firms is not to emphasise top-down solutions but to respond to the issues, aspirations and abilities of individuals and make personal and civic responsibility core to a Smart City Vision.

Recently, smart cities have emerged as a hot research topic, with cities, national governments and businesses exploring ways to exploit the potential of ICT to improve quality of life and achieve greater efficiency in service delivery.

Our new research briefing explores recent commentary and research in this area. It considers the definition of smart cities and highlights the characteristics of smart cities, and comments on issues which are being addressed in the built environment, such as the provision of appropriate digital infrastructure, decentralised energy and district heating schemes and energy efficiency measures.

The briefing takes a closer look at the deployment of smart technologies in the key area of transport and travel and discusses the commercial opportunities that smart cities present for businesses. It also considers issues with digital inclusion in smart cities, and the application of digital technologies in the co-production of internet-enabled services within emerging smart cities.